Traditions
by Thethuthinnang
Summary: BtVS.LotR. Christmas is Christmas, wherever Buffy happens to be. Christmas present for amusewithaview!
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Note: For amusewithaview, who wanted fluff—and then went on to blow me out of the water with an Edward/Buffy _series_ in the making. Curse you! I SHALL defeat you!

...seriously, though, when do I get more? greedy

Chapter One: Wrapping

"Ow!"

The huge, iron shears, a piece of ragged cloth caught in the angle of edges, clattered onto the table.

Buffy watched mournfully as the gash in her finger welled a bright, red drop of blood.

"Nice, Slayer," she muttered to herself. "Way to really get the hang of the sharp and pointy."

Buffy glared down at the piles of bright cloth on the table, and then at the iron shears on top of them.

When informed that there was no place in Edoras where she could find such an outlandish and needlessly frivolous thing as paper made solely for the use of _wrapping_ things, Buffy had been stumped. How did they give presents if they didn't wrap them?

"You simply give them," Eowyn had told her archly, still flushed from the outrageously wasteful suggestion of paper for _wrapping_, "as you would give any other thing."

"That's no fun," Buffy had tried to protest, but another scathing glance from Eowyn had been enough to shut her up about it. She hadn't dared bring up the subject of _colored_ paper; Eowyn had looked ready to blow an artery as it was.

Still, Buffy had refused to give in. Christmas was—well, actually, Christmas was Yule here, but to _her_ at least Christmas was still Christmas, and she was going to do things right, even if she was the only one who knew what the right thing was!

Ignoring the absolutely totalitarian tone of her Christmas cheer, Buffy had set about finding something to wrap her presents with.

After turning Edoras upside-down—and enduring an almost supernaturally boring speech on extravagance from Eowyn—Buffy had come to the conclusion that the closest, not to mention _only_, alternative to wrapping paper was cloth. Nothing else was as easily obtained or cut, or came in any other color but brown.

Getting cloth from the cloth traders turned out to be much easier than talking to Eowyn about paper. She bought her fill of reds, greens, and yellows—teeth-achingly overpriced, but she was in too far to back out now—and went to the dressmakers for some fancy thread, which cost Buffy her other eyetooth. Then, armed with borrowed shears (graciously lent to her free of charge by the same dressmakers), Buffy had scurried away to an unused corner of Meduseld with a window for light and a door for privacy to wrap her presents.

Only to be defeated by shears.

Buffy scowled. She had _not_ spent two months getting these things together to be cast down from her Christmas throne by some stupid oversized scissors! Sticking the finger in her mouth, Buffy reached again for the shears.

Halfway through, she hit a snag. Eowyn's present was wrapped. Theodred's and Theoden's presents, however, were bulkier and took up more cloth than Buffy had bargained on. Measuring the cloth she had left against them, it was with sheer chagrin that Buffy found that she didn't have enough to stretch between both of them and the third, last gift she had sitting off to the side. There simply wasn't enough. No matter how she folded the cloth and laid it out, she didn't have enough to cover all three things.

Buffy stared down at Eomer's gift, and sighed.

Well...maybe if she cut _this_ particular way... Frowning, Buffy placed one hand down to keep everything straight and, shears in the other, put the blade to the cloth.

"Isenwyrhta?"

Buffy yelped, the shears slipped, and she flinched as a slice was taken out of her palm.

Embarrassed and irritated, Buffy turned to give whoever had interrupted her a piece of her mind about knocking.

Eomer stood in the door.

Buffy stopped, mouth half-open. Embarrassment swallowed up irritation.

"Isenwyrhta," said Eomer stiffly, "the King commands your presence."

She closed her mouth.

Eomer stood rigidly, halfway inside the small guardroom. He had gone without armor that day, dressed casually in tunic and leggings, his hair loose down his back. His eyes were fixed on the window above Buffy's head, his face set in that inflexible expression he always wore when talking to her.

Buffy knew Eomer couldn't stand her. What she couldn't figure out was why. Eowyn had said that it was just her brother's way, to be standoffish with strangers, but Buffy had been in Edoras for nearly a year and that excuse was wearing thin. Eowyn liked her well enough, and the King liked her—she somehow doubted he would have appointed her the Isenwyrhta if he didn't. His son, Theodred, practically wouldn't leave her alone.

Eomer didn't even like to look at her.

He wouldn't say her name. He always called her Isenwyrhta, her official title, and before that had referred to her as _Elpeodiga_, "foreigner," rather than use her name, despite Eowyn's and his uncle's frowns.

Buffy spent a lot of her time wishing she knew why.

Eomer glanced at her, looking away again instantly when he saw her looking at him. A corner of his eye seemed to twitch, as if he winced.

"The King, Isenwyrhta," he said through gritted teeth.

The pale light from the window shone on his hair, burnished it into a fiery gold. Buffy tried to ignore the way her heart clenched.

"Coming," she muttered, and turned back to the table to push everything under the cloth she had left.

She'd forgotten about the cut, which had apparently been deeper than she'd thought. When she reached over the green cloth she'd been attempting to wrap Theodred's gift in, she left behind a long, dark smear of blood that instantly soaked everything.

Buffy snatched her hand back, crying out, but it was too late. The green cloth was destroyed.

Disappointment flooded her. Buffy bit her lip, would have cursed a blue streak if she hadn't been caught by the shoulder and shoved forcibly around.

Her leg hit the edge of the table. Buffy's breath caught in her throat.

Eomer stood almost against her, his hand on her shoulder. His expression was one of alarm.

She watched him look at the cloth, at the stain. She watched him see her hand, watched him see the blood dripping from the cut in her palm.

His hand gripped her shoulder.

"They slipped," said Buffy, and her voice for some reason came out shaken. She tried to clear her throat. "The shears...they slipped."

He looked at the piles of cloth, the red, green, and yellow. "What do you do here, Isenwyrhta?"

Buffy mumbled.

Eomer looked at her, then, and his grasp on her shoulder tightened.

Buffy coughed. "I'm wrapping presents."

There was a moment where Buffy stood there, uncomfortable, bleeding from the hand, and Eomer stood there with his hand on her shoulder looking like he was trying to translate what she'd said into something he understood. He and his sister really did look a lot alike, sometimes.

When she felt she couldn't take the awkwardness anymore, Buffy offered a feeble, "It's tradition. Where I come from, I mean. You wrap your Christmas—I mean, _Yule_—you wrap your Yule presents before you give them to people. It makes...it makes it more...more fun."

Buffy shut up. Eomer was looking at her.

He was looking at her.

His touch became gentler. Something changed in the shape of his mouth. His face, his face had... Had his eyes always been that, that...?

Eomer lifted her hand, the one she had cut. He held it to the light from the window, and she stared at the blood dripping from it.

"Ach, Isenwyrhta," he said quietly. "What do you do here?"

He took the green cloth, tore a strip from it with a casual flex of muscle. Folding it over, he tied it around her hand, tight and close, making a bandage of her wrapping paper.

Buffy closed her eyes.

His breathing was...off. She heard the difference in it, the difference between normal, calm breathing, with all its idiosyncrasies, and the unnatural evenness of someone forcing his breath to remain steady. She smelled on him the tang of sweat, that particular smell that was a man who spent most of his life on horseback. She smelled the steel he wore, that he carried, smelled the thick wool he wore against the wind.

And beneath it all, there was him.

He adjusted the bandage a last time, and then his hands stilled. He did not let go of her hand, but he also did not do anything else. She heard him swallow, heard the hitch in his breathing.

She felt his eyes on her.

Buffy opened her eyes, and was slightly shocked at how close he was standing. Her gaze was level with the point of his shirt where it began to open up towards the collar.

His fingers found the one of hers that had been bleeding earlier.

She watched him look at it. The blood had been wiped away, but the cut was still there, glistening deeper in with fresh, new blood. It was almost as if she'd pricked her finger on a needle.

Eomer's eyes had darkened. He looked at the finger, at where she'd cut herself with a pair of clunky scissors, and then, without looking at her face, he put that finger to his mouth.

Buffy gasped, but under her breath, through her nose, without opening her mouth. She felt his lips close on her flesh, felt his tongue against the lacerated skin. His face pressed to her hand as if he kissed her fingers, his cheek to her bandaged palm, and she felt through the cloth the roughness of his beard, the texture of his skin.

"Eomer," she whispered, and her voice also seemed strange to her.

He pulled her hand back down, away from his mouth, and she didn't think she imagined that he pressed her finger to his lips before he did.

"Buffy," he said, the name unfamiliar and awkward on his tongue, and he said it like she had once heard people say their prayers. He faced her, and he was closer than he'd ever been before, so close that she could have breathed him in if she'd tried to. His eyes went to the table behind her, to something lying there, and she realized that the gift she'd meant to give him, that sheathe worked with the insignia of his rank, family, and clan, was lying out in the open.

A light flared in his eyes. She watched, dazed, as he began to look at her, began to step closer, their bodies nearly pressed against each other—

—and he stopped. His brows came together.

He was looking at something. He was staring at it.

His hand constricted around hers.

"Isenwyrhta," he said then, and his voice was stiff and empty. "Forgive me."

He moved back. He released her hand.

Buffy inhaled sharply. Eomer was standing again at the door, as far away from her as he could get while still in the small room. His face was pale, his eyes angry and averted.

"Forgive me, Isenwyrhta," he said, the words scraped out as if he choked on them. "I have come too close to you."

He hesitated.

"The King, Isenwyrhta," he said again, and his voice was flat and civil, the way it always was, had always been, when he talked to her.

Eomer left.

Buffy listened to him go, his steps on the stone floor. She bit her lip and made a fist with the hand that he had bandaged, hiding the finger he had kissed.

She had thought he didn't like her.

She had been so _certain_.

Her heart ached painfully in her chest.

Buffy turned, and the first thing that caught her eye, the first thing she saw, was the belt she'd made to give Theodred, the belt worked with the Sun and the Horse, the prince's personal emblems, lying coiled beside the sheathe she'd made Eomer.

Theodred, who wouldn't leave her alone.

Theodred, who was Eomer's cousin and future King.

Theodred, whom Eomer honored above all others.

Theodred.

And Eomer.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Chapter Two: Paper, and

Since almost the very day she'd come to Edoras, Buffy had been wondering why Eomer seemed to dislike her so intensely. He didn't look at her, didn't speak to her unless he had to, and ignored Eowyn when she scolded him for being so cold to an honored guest of their uncle's. He treated her with a brusque formality that bordered on rude, and not a few people, King Theoden included, had been unable to help noticing.

Buffy had at first put it down to Eomer's native suspicion of strangers. Then she'd chalked it up to his notorious dislike of uppity women. Then, for a while, she'd even considered the possibility of his being jealous of all the attention his uncle, cousin, and sister seemed to spend on her.

For a few, especially depressed days, she'd even mulled over the idea that maybe Eomer son of Eomund was just a rotten person who hated everybody who wasn't related by blood.

And now the whole world was turned upside-down.

It explained…well, _so much_, actually. Like the way he was never around unless Theodred was, and then only standing in a corner glowering with his usual, standoffish distance while Theodred talked and teased with her. Or the way Eomer never looked her in the eye, except for those few, breathless times when their eyes did meet, by sheer accident, and he'd wrenched his gaze away as if from something painful to see.

Or the way he'd always scowled, his eyes filled with helpless anger, whenever he'd seen Theodred's hand on her hand, her shoulder, her hair.

Eomer was devoted to his cousin, practically worshiped the ground Theodred walked on. The more Buffy thought about it, the more understandable Eomer's behavior became, at least if you tried to see it from his point of view. Aggressive and straightforward, not a single deceptive bone in his body, Eomer must have been in an agony of uncertainty, unable to express himself honestly for fear of hurting Theodred and unable to conceal something so close to his heart simply because it went so much against his nature to do so. The result had been that he'd rebuffed her more severely and angrily than warranted, and seemed to hate her when the truth was as far from that as he could get.

All of which only served to make Buffy fall even harder than she'd already been falling, ever since the first time she'd seen him, standing tall and golden in the low light of Meduseld.

With one, mind-blowing difference.

Buffy knew what she had to do.

From the moment they'd shared in the guardroom up to the morning of Midwinter Day, Eomer avoided her like the plague. He began strategically retreating (not to say _fleeing_) from any room she happened to go into, which made the first part of her plan absurdly uncomplicated.

Several days before Yule, Buffy came to find Theodred in the King's stables, where he was seeing to his horse. She came just in time to see Eomer leaving the opposite way, his cloak flapping in the current of his passing.

Theodred smiled to see her. "Buffy. For once, you have sought me out instead of hiding from me."

Buffy smiled awkwardly back. Uncomplicated did not mean painless.

"Theodred," she said, "I need to talk to you."

The way his eyes and smile seemed to shine with pleasure made Buffy hate herself that much more. "Of course, Buffy."

Buffy held her breath. "I…I need your advice."

Theodred turned from his warhorse's stall, coming closer, barely an arm's length away. His attention was completely on her, his dark eyes made darker with focus and something else that made her heart both quicken and sink. "Anything, my lady," he said, his voice low, and Buffy thought she'd never seen such beautiful dark eyes.

Swallowing hard, Buffy grit her teeth, put on the dreamiest, most oblivious expression in her arsenal (which, she had to admit, was saying a lot more than she liked), let her eyes fill with tears, and told him, in a breathless, girlish rush, "Theodred, I don't know what to do. I am in love with Eomer, who hates me!"

When she staggered out of the stables a half-hour later, it was with both a sense of relief and a taste of utter self-loathing. The expression on Theodred's face had been worse than being impaled by a Turok-Han blade, and his efforts at suppressing his palpable pain had been nothing short of resurrection all over again.

_It had to be done,_ Buffy told herself. No matter how much it had hurt to cause him pain then, it would have hurt worse if she'd waited. At least this way, no one's pride had been on the line or insulted. Buffy thought she'd done a rather good job of pretending not to know anything about Theodred's intentions regarding her, and now they'd both be able to just go on as if he'd never even imagined being anything but a friend and patron. She didn't even want to think about the mess they'd have been in if Theodred had already professed his feelings for her.

Not that any of that rationalizing made her feel like any less of a rat.

The first half of her scheme mercifully out of the way, Buffy squared her shoulders and set off to see about The Plan, Part Two.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Chapter Three: Mistletoe

The second half of her genius plan was actually quite simple. The tool with which she was going to guarantee success was easy enough to make out of bits of scraps and wire, and wrapping it took a bare minimum of the cloth she had left, so that she managed to get all her presents wrapped as well. The hardest part was going to be finding a spare moment and enough privacy to actually implement everything.

Naturally, she barely managed to get the thing wrapped before Eomer wrecked everything by bursting in on her in her room.

She'd just put on the finishing touches when the door to her room slammed open. Almost jumping out of her skin, Buffy whirled, automatically reaching for her dagger, and saw Eomer standing in the gaping doorway.

The shout died before leaving her mouth.

He was breathing harshly, as if he'd been running. He wore his leathers, his sword, and a cloak, his hair strewn about as if he'd just come in from a strong wind. The helm he wore when he went out riding was under his arm, and he brought with him a breath of cold air and snow.

Buffy took her hand off the hilt of her dagger, feeling somehow embarrassed.

He was looking—no, _glaring_ at her. His hands, one clenched under his helm and the other flat against the door, trembled with fury.

He looked glorious.

"Isenwyrhta," he said, and it was more of a wolfish snarl than a name.

"Eomer," she answered uneasily, and tried to imagine what Theodred might have told him. Theodred wouldn't deliberately sabotage her, would he? He wasn't that kind of a man. Except then why was Eomer so angry at her _yet again_—

Eomer marched into her room—completely ignoring all rules of polite conduct, a boldness shocking even by Rohirric standards—threw his helm down on the table, seized her waist, lifted her up nearly a foot off the floor, crushed her against him, and kissed her.

At that point, Buffy seriously debated whether or not to faint. But if this was a dream, then she wanted to wring every last mind-boggling second out of it, and so instead she put her arms around his neck, her hands in his hair, and drowned.

Eomer pulled away first. She resisted, made him pull her with him as he tried to draw back, and sighed against his mouth. At that, he trembled violently, his hands grasping tightly at her waist and hip, and he pressed his lips to her flesh, where there was a curving hollow in the bones between shoulder and neck.

When they finally did manage to break apart, Buffy feeling as if she were drunk on the taste of his mouth and skin, the expression on Eomer's face was of a tenderness she could never have imagined on his face without seeing it. He was even smiling—a small, cocksure smile, but a smile—and he stroked her hair as if he were afraid she would break if he touched her too forcefully.

"You wretched girl," he told her, voice low and intimate, carrying a trace of that stiff, angry tone he had always used with her, the tone she now recognized for what it was. "Had I known—"

"—you wouldn't have been so mean to me?" she finished for him, kissing a finger twined with his hair.

His eyes darkened to the green of holly leaves. "You would be the mother of my sons even now."

The heat began somewhere low in her belly, a heat that swelled and spread until Buffy's skin felt as hot as a tang glowing white in the forge fire. She pulled his head down, kissed him with all the urgency she felt shivering through her skin, and he held her closer, harder, the taste of morning ale and smoke on his tongue. He was still holding her off of the ground, an arm braced against the small of her back, and now he slid the other down under her legs, lifting them up, and he was carrying her back, was putting his knee onto the bed pushed into the far alcove of the room, and Buffy tensed to feel him begin to lower her, begin to follow her body with his own—

_"Brother!"_

Everything stopped.

Buffy stared, wide-eyed, over Eomer's shoulder, even as he turned his own head to look.

The door was wide open. In that space stood Eowyn, red-faced and wide-eyed, mouth half-open as she stammered.

"I…I…" She closed her mouth, took a breath, and tried again. "Brother, I…I had been looking for…you…"

Buffy just knew, just _knew_ that she was going to explode with embarrassment. "Eowyn—"

Eomer stood up.

Still firmly in his grasp, Buffy went with him.

Without letting her go, Eomer strode right over to the door, Buffy wide-eyed and speechless in his arms. Before Eowyn he stopped, eyeing his sister with an expression that looked suspiciously like smug contentment.

"We have plighted our troth," he told his sister, as frankly and nonchalantly as if he were making a remark on the weather, not at all like he was standing in an unrelated woman's room carrying her like an Easterling carrying off the spoils of war. "We will be married, and she will be my wife. Make haste and inform our mother-brother, the King."

Eowyn opened and closed her mouth.

"I accept your regards, sister," said Eomer gravely. "Now let me be."

Putting a hand on Eowyn's shoulder, he gently, yet insistently turned her around. Then, placing the same hand flat on the middle of her back, he pushed her out into the hall, as if he were shooing a child out of the room.

This time, he closed and latched the door.

Only then did he look at the woman he was flinging around like a sack of potatoes.

"I don't remember saying anything about marrying you," said Buffy, trying ineffectively to cross her arms.

His expression immediately turned forbidding. "I will suffer no opposition in this, _leofa_," he warned her. "In this, if in nothing else, you will do as I bid you."

Buffy couldn't find it in herself to protest.

Abruptly, Eomer seemed to remember that he was still holding her off the ground. He grimaced, and, putting her slowly down on her own feet, said, "I will speak to the King. If I get my way, we will wed in the first month of the new year."

Buffy gaped. "But—"

He speared her with a look that made her bite her tongue as she went quiet.

While she stood there, head spinning, Eomer happened to glance over her shoulder. His eyes narrowed, and he frowned. "What is this?"

He stalked past her. Buffy blinked, turned, and watched him pick a strangely-shaped, gaily-wrapped bundle off of the table.

"Oh," said Buffy. "That's…um, that's nothing."

His eyes blazed, and Buffy's head went light and dizzy at the unrestrained jealousy that filled Eomer's face.

"It's for you," she breathed, and then, hurriedly, "Well, for us, really, for you _and_ me, but—no! You can't open it!"

His hand stopped above the cloth. "If it is for our use, what does it matter?" he demanded.

God, what a temper! Buffy felt her own combative nature rise to the occasion. "Because it's not Yule yet," she retorted, and snatched the object out of his hands. "You don't open Yule presents until Yule!"

"Very well," he said haughtily. "But now I expect _two_ Yule gifts."

Buffy didn't know whether to hug him or smack him. She settled for holding the wrapped item high over their heads—a literal stretch on her part, Eomer being something of a giant—and then reaching up as far as she could to brush his mouth with hers.

Eomer raised an eyebrow, instantly calmer. But he still eyed the bundle of red cloth and yellow ribbon in her hand. "What is the purpose of this?"

"Oh," said Buffy happily, "just another Yule tradition from home."

Three cheers for her genius plan.


End file.
